Forum:Mad Men
Anybody a fan of Mad Men here? Just got started on season six. (Donut) :Sorry, never seen it. I guess I like my period pieces to go back a bit farther than that--''Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, Copper . . . Turtle Fan (talk) 00:43, April 9, 2013 (UTC) :Boardwalk Empire is great. I went to an open casting call once to be an extra on it, instead I got cast as an extra in some romantic comedy that sounds terrible and I have no desire to see. I did see one episode of Downton Abbey also and liked it. (Donut) ::Sorry to hear it about the casting call. I've never tried to be an extra, though it could be fun. ::Downton is highly enjoyable. Maggie Smith's the shit, though all the cast, or most of them anyway, bring it i their fashion. Takes a little while to get into their storytelling style, but once you do it's great fun to fret over whether some stodgy old English lord is going to make a scene when his Irish son-in-law brings in a Catholic priest to baptize the baby, or if Lady Edith will be able to write a magazine column. The frivolity unfolds alongside more serious plotlines, we form opinions of who should have prim and proper chaperoned dates with whom, and genuine emotional punches to the gut come along too. It's just annoying how short the seasons are and how long the breaks are between them. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:50, April 11, 2013 (UTC) When I have some time i'll definitely have to check it out starting from the begining. The episode I saw definitely had spoilers in it but nothing to damning if I go back to the start. Actually I ended up going to act as the extra anyway, in a crowd shot in Times Square. It's just that the movie looked bad and I never bothered to actually see it. I was recently an extra on an episode of Law and Order SVU also which was cool, it's just exciting to be on a movie or TV set in general. It'd be funny to have a Downton Abbey/Mad Men crossover where Nucky maybe or one of his henchmen is a guest at the estate to buy some Johnny Walker Black and have it shipped back to the States. (Donut) 03:33 April 11, 2013 :Yes, a crossover between ''Mad Men and Downton Abbey wouldn't make any sense unless the plot were driven by a character foreign to both franchises. Of course, I'm not really one to talk; I'm sort of working on a big old sci fi fanfic that involves Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Foundation, and a special appearance by the God-Emperor of Dune. Turtle Fan (talk) 14:42, April 13, 2013 (UTC) :I like the sound of that. Then at the end Marty and Doc should show up in the DeLorean Donut 14:36 PM April 13 ::It started with me sort of satirizing fanfic writers by listing just about every science fiction character I'd ever found compelling and trying to come up with a deliberately ridiculous way of getting them all in one story. Much to my surprise I wound up with an idea for a plotline that I actually felt hung together fairly coherently, and I set to work refining it. Most of it is set in the Star Wars universe, to minimize the problems inherent in mixing together franchises with mutually exclusive versions of Earth's future history. ::We start with the TARDIS materializing on Tatooine next to the unconscious form of Luke Skywalker just as the Sand People are about to loot his speeder (the point in A New Hope where he first finds Obi-Wan). The Eleventh Doctor and the Ponds come out expecting to be in the Savoy Hotel in 1890 (the Doctor's anniversary gift to them from the episode "The Power of Three"). They quickly learn that the TARDIS won't let them leave the Star Wars universe until they complete some task, but they can't figure out what it is. Fortunately Obi-Wan shows up just then and explains that, when he was younger, he met a future version of the Doctor and that all their fates are intertwined. Artoo plays Leia's message for Obi-Wan and the Doctor essentially replaces Han Solo, taking Obi-Wan, Luke, and the droids to Alderaan. They arrive in orbit just in time to see the Death Star destroy the planet, and are soon taken aboard the Death Star themselves. The Doctor uses the psychic paper to impersonate a special Imperial agent with orders to bring Leia to Coruscant. (Obi-Wan had already told him she was being held prisoner on the station; he had learned this from the future Doctor he met as a young man, an infinite exposition loop that I've tried not to use as a crutch too often.) Obi-Wan goes off to challenge Vader so as to distract him from Luke's presence, and is killed; the rest of the gang get on the TARDIS and get away to the Rebel base, but not before the Doctor visits Governor Tarkin and swears revenge for the willful destruction of Leia's home world. (The Doctor of course knows a thing or two about home worlds being destroyed; he was simultaneously on both sides of the equation when Gallifrey got time-locked, but he had no choice, and is disgusted to think that someone who did have a choice would willingly destroy a world.) The TARDIS arrives at the Rebel base, Leia and the droids remain, the Doctor discovers and removes an Imperial tracking device. Then he takes a very reluctant Luke to Dagobah to begin his Jedi training with Yoda. (Luke would of course rather stay and join the Rebels, but his destiny lies elsewhere.) Tarkin picks up the tracking device's signal and takes the Death Star to the Rebel base. The Rebels try the torpedoes-down-the-exhaust-vent thing, but with both Luke and Han absent from the battle, they fail, and Tarkin destroys their base, killing Leia and C-3P0. R2-D2 escapes because he was assigned to a fighter (Wedge's instead of Luke's) and the surviving fighters hightailed it out of the system after they lost the battle. ::Meanwhile Bayta Darrell's ship has come out of a hyperspace corridor, expecting to be in orbit of Trantor, where its passengers will play out the final chapter of Foundation and Empire. Instead they're in the path of an Imperial Star Destroyer which stops them for inspection and sends stormtroopers aboard. Neither ship's crew realizes what's going on, and the Foundation characters' highly suspicious behavior leads the Imperials to impound the ship. The urgency of the ship's mission leads to a disastrous confrontation in which Bayta's husband is killed. Magnifico then reveals himself as the Mule and uses his mind control on the stormtroopers as well as Ebling Mis, though he leaves Bayta untouched in the hopes that he can preserve their authentic friendship, as in the book. Bayta hates him and goes off to sulk. He has the stormtroopers take him to the Star Destroyer's bridge, where he takes control of the ship, and sets course for the Empire's regional capital, where he intends to convert the local governor and begin building up a power base. Along the way they intercept the Defiant, straight from the battle to retake Deep Space Nine. (The Prophets sent Sisko to this other universe, where he will never see his son, his station, or Bajor again, as the "penance" they spoke of in that episode. Though I downplay the origins of this story, they're also the ones keeping the TARDIS here, because the Doctor owes them a favor, and they somehow made contact with Daneel Olivaw and convinced him to manipulate events so the Mule would end up in another universe, because even though there was no place for him in the Seldon Plan, he was not an evil man, and he could do a lot of good under other circumstances.) The Mule converts the Defiant crew and adds it to his fleet, but is unable to convert Sisko himself because the Prophets gave him psychic protection. So they throw him in the brig, where Bayta fills him in on what she knows of the Mule's origins and plans. The Mule eventually takes over a few sectors of the Empire, and now that the Rebellion is crushed Darth Sidious turns his attention to this new "rebellion" made up of an ever-growing number of "mutinous" officers. He sends a huge fleet to the Mule's capital, and the Mule panics because he doesn't have anyone under his control who can win a battle against those odds. Sisko escapes from imprisonment and offers to lead the Mule's forces in battle if he will stop using mind control. At that moment the surviving elements of the Rebel Alliance, including R2-D2, arrive; they've heard of a new uprising against the Empire and want to be part of it. Their presence allows Sisko to convince the Mule that people will willingly follow him without mind control, and the Mule agrees. He releases everyone he's controlling and holds anyone not willing to follow him in detention centers, but most of the Imperials he'd converted choose to continue fighting for him because they see an alternative to the tyrannical Emperor. The Doctor arrives as well and wants to join the fight; since Tarkin destroyed the Rebel base he's come to hate the Empire even more and is fully committed to the war against it. Together all these factions defeat the Imperial force and the Mule's alliance, called the Union of Worlds (what he named his government in Second Foundation), continues to grow. ::The Emperor next sends the Death Star, fresh off renovations to eliminate the vulnerable exhaust port, and now there's no way to destroy it, at least not with anything close to the resources the Union of Worlds has. The Mule suggests that he could go aboard and convert enough of the crew that they'd be able to capture the station intact. Sisko is prepared to stop him, since he'd insisted the Mule stop using his powers as part of their deal, and the Mule realizes he can't hold his Union together if Sisko opposes him. But Dax convinces Sisko to let the Mule temporarily convert the crew by playing on the memories of various events that have occurred over the course of their friendship. The Mule, disguised as a junior officer of the Imperial Navy, goes aboard the Death Star with a couple of genuine Imperial officers who have come over to his side and Rory, who volunteered to go along because he had been aboard the station before. They're discovered and the officers are killed. Rory and the Mule (whose powers can be negated by someone using Force, in this case Darth Vader) are taken alive--the Mule so the Emperor can study him, Rory because they know he's associated with the Doctor, and they've figured out that the Doctor knows where Luke and Yoda are. So the Imperials use Rory the way they used Han and Leia in The Empire Strikes Back. Luke wants to leave Dagobah to go rescue them; Yoda and the ghost of Obi-Wan try to talk him out of it, but relent when the Doctor shows up saying he's going to try to rescue Rory with or without Luke's help. At this point the Jedi Masters urge Luke to go with him, because they know the Doctor cannot stand against Darth Vader on his own, and the Doctor is at this point as important to their plans as Luke himself. ::When they get to the Death Star, Luke immediately challenges Vader and they go off to battle. It's the same as the duel in The Empire Strikes Back, with Luke losing his hand and Vader revealing his true identity as Luke's father, and Luke deciding to fall to his death (in this case down the central reactor shaft) rather than accept this horrible truth. As soon as Vader's distracted the Mule starts converting stormtroopers and orders Tarkin arrested and delivered into the Doctor's custody. However, as he's being led aboard the TARDIS, Tarkin takes Amy hostage and only releases her after he's escaped. He returns to Coruscant, where he's horribly executed for failing the Emperor, but reflects that even this is surely better than the revenge the Doctor would have taken on him. ::The TARDIS rescues Luke and takes him to the main Union fleet, where he's given his prosthetic hand. He spends the next two years bouncing back and forth between missions for the Union forces and finishing his training with Yoda. The Mule converts the Death Star crew and brings the station into the territory his forces control, where he releases the crew from his control and finds that most of them will willingly serve him. He puts Sisko in command of the station and the fleet, and for two years the Union grows as it wages war against the Empire. They take Coruscant (Sisko refuses to destroy a planet with such a huge civilian population) and put the Emperor on the run. Eventually their intelligence, led by Garak, learns that the Emperor is planning to set up a new base on Dagobah, and is gathering what's left of his fleet there. The Union plans to attack with its own fleet, and use the Death Star to destroy Dagobah and finish off Palpatine. ::On Dagobah, the Emperor kills Yoda. Vader captures Luke and sends him to the Emperor to be converted to the Sith. However, before he does, he tells Luke he's prepared to betray the Emperor rather than harm his son, and tries to convince Luke to go along with his plan to take down Sidious together. Luke says he will only agree if they fight the Emperor as Jedi. Vader says he doesn't care whether Luke becomes a Jedi or a Sith, but that the Jedi have never been able to defeat Sidious and that they will need to use the Dark Side for this one battle. Luke refuses and Vader leaves in despair. ::Vader is immediately attacked by the Doctor, using his old (and then Luke's) lightsaber, which he'd recovered from the bottom of the Death Star reactor shaft where Luke had dropped it. The Doctor knows nothing about lightsaber combat and Vader easily defeats him, but that had been part of the plan; the Doctor allows himself to be killed, then regenerates, distracting Vader while his companions (now including Julian Bashir, on special assignment from the Defiant) sedate and abduct the Sith Lord. When the Doctor recovers from his regeneration he takes Vader (who is helpless aboard the TARDIS thanks to some Time Lord technology that allows the Doctor to cut him off from the Force) back to the scene in Revenge of the Sith where Padme begs Anakin to give up this evil path he's starting out on. While the Doctor meets with young Obi-Wan (closing the circle begun in the first scene), the companions force Vader to watch as Anakin strangles Padme. Then Obi-Wan and Anakin begin their duel, and once they've moved off, the Doctor brings Padme aboard the TARDIS. They return to the "present," to the Defiant's sickbay, where Bashir and Rory (who has trained in "modern" medical tech) deliver baby Luke and Leia and try in vain to save the healthy but dying Padme as Vader miserably watches on. ::Meanwhile, the battle seems to be going well for the Union; their ships gain the upper hand against the Imperial fleet, and the Death Star enters orbit of Dagobah, where Sisko gives the order to fire. But while Luke watches, the Emperor uses the Force to drain life energy from the organisms of Dagobah and channel it into an energy field which drains the Death Star's primary weapon, leaving the station's energy depleted as the Emperor summons renforcements. Even this fails to anger Luke enough to be tempted by the Dark Side, however. ::In the Defiant's sickbay, the Doctor explains to Bashir that, no matter how well he treats Padme's injuries, she will still die, that her death is a fixed point in time. He brought her with them not so they could save her but so she could take part in the plan to save Luke. The Doctor explains to Padme that he's brought her forwhard in time, then brings her and the babies onto the TARDIS, where Vader excitedly offers to make her his queen when he overthrows the Emperor. But she is horrified at what her beloved Anakin has become and dies from the shock. The Doctor breaks into Vader's agony and reminds him that, though he'd thought joining the Sith would save his wife and children, it wound up causing Padme's and Leia's deaths--but that there's still time to save Luke. The Emperor has by now given up on corrupting Luke and is trying to kill him with finger-lightning. The TARDIS materializes between the Emperor and Luke, and Vader jumps out and immediately attacks the Emperor. His job is to keep the Emperor occupied until the Doctor can return to rescue Luke--he has to return the infants and Padme's body to Obi-Wan in the past, and he cannot have two versions of Luke aboard the TARDIS at the same time without creating a paradox. ::Meanwhile, after learning that Sisko had failed to destroy Dagobah, the Mule asks Amy, who has remained on the Defiant, to put him in touch with the TARDIS. (In one of those little extra scenes the BBC puts out between episodes, we once heard Amy leave the Doctor voice mail, so clearly at some point offscreen he gave her a way to reach him, as he'd done for Martha Jones before her.) He asks the Doctor to take him to the Emperor's chamber, so the Doctor picks him up before going to rescue Luke (and after the Mule has said goodbye to Bayta, during which meeting Bayta--who's been allowed to live comfortably as a sort-of prisoner during these events despite continuing to be against the First Citizen of the Galaxy--finally realizes that the Mule is a good man after all). The Doctor and the Mule talk during the short journey, and the Mule explains that he expected the Emperor would be able to defend himself against the Death Star, because he would not have built such a powerful weapon without having some way of ensuring that a ruthless, ambitious man like Tarkin could not turn it against him in an attempted coup. Plan B was to use his visisonor to channel dark emotional energy to kill the Emperor, as the Mule had done to the Mayor of Terminus and the prince who tried to rape Bayta on Neotrantor. Since he's never used that power in the Star Wars universe he assumes the Emperor has not been able to prepare for it, and he also assumes that, since he will be channeling emotions which the Emperor already embraces instead of forcing a new emotional state upon him, the Mule will be able to do it despite the ability of the Force to block his psychic powers. Then he explains how, growing up on Gaia where dissent was ruthlessly suppressed, then being mutilated and exiled, and then wandering the galaxy and being mistreated by everyone he met, he'd come to believe that cruelty was the only way to survive, so he'd remorselessly used his powers to advance his own interests at the expense of anyone else's. But Bayta's affection, then Sisko's voluntary loyalty, then the willingness of more and more people to believe in him on their own as the Union expanded, led him to see another way. But he's still not entirely comfortable with being a democratic leader and fears the temptation to go back to using mind control will one day be too great. Moreover, thanks to the mutations Gaia forced on him, he knows he will die very young, so the Union is going to have to be able to continue without him, and he's already made preparations for that. For these reasons he's prepared to sacrifice his own life in exchange for final victory over the Empire. ::The TARDIS arrives to pick up Luke just as the badly injured Emperor kills Vader. The Mule starts playing his visisonor, the Emperor channels Dark Side energies against him, and the two kill each other off in a release of psychic energies that completely obliterates the entire planet. The Doctor plans to take Luke to the Defiant so Bashir and Rory can treat his injuries, but Luke insists that they go to the control center of the Death Star, which is still energy depleted after firing its primary weapon at Dagobah while the Emperor was protecting it. ::Suddenly a second Death Star appears, under Tarkin's command: The public execution had in fact been of a clone, arranged by the Emperor to get his enemies to let their guard down (and to remind Tarkin what the consequences of failing a second time would be). Tarkin has spent the last two years in a remote top-secret base where they've built the second Death Star. Now all he has to do is fire on the helpless first Death Star, mop up the Union fleet, and, with Palpatine and Vader already dead, declare himself Emperor. But Luke gets aboard the first Death Star just in time to use Palpatine's Death Star defense trick to drain non-lethal amounts of life energy from all the station's crew members and block the second Death Star's weapon. Now the first Death Star will be recharged before the second and will easily destroy it; but first, the Doctor pops over there to capture Tarkin, lock him away in a room deep within the TARDIS, and finally take his revenge. ::Bayta and Sisko, who was designated as the new First Citizen of the Galaxy by the Mule's final orders, discuss the Mule's legacy. Sisko asks Bayta what she will do now. She says she doesn't know because everything she ever knew is gone. Sisko suggests she travel with the Doctor, who agrees to take her on board. Now that his task is complete and Luke can fulfill his own destiny of restoring the supremacy of the Light Side of the Force, the Doctor is able to return to his home universe. He brings Amy and Rory back to their anniversary party and tells Amy that he's come to realize, through this adventure, that he is at once a blessing and a danger to his companions. He tells Amy that she no longer needs him and his continued presence will only endanger her and Rory, so he will absolutely will not see them again (so they will not end up falling victim to the Angels). After their goodbye, the Doctor and Bayta go off on new adventures. (Since he's already met one version of Clara at this point, I may need to rework this part of the ending if his figuring out why she is as she is turns out to be vitally important to the space-time continuum. I originally intended to pull him out of his own universe before "The Pandorica Opens," then between Seasons 5 and 6, then before "The Wedding of River Song;" but every time a new Eleventh Doctor story airs, it turns out that events of infinite importance have already been in play all along. I will not push him back any further, because Amy and Rory are necessary to the story. And by the way, when he gets back to the party he tells Rory's father that he figured out what's going on with the cubes in his spare time. He gives his findings to Brian and tells him to pass them along to UNIT, and the danger will be over.) ::As Luke is preparing to lay the groundwork for a new and improved order of Jedi Knights, he consults the ghost of his father ("played" by Sebastian Shaw, NOT Hayden Christiansen!) They discuss events and both start wondering how Luke knew that Tarkin's Death Star was about to appear, given that the Emperor hadn't revealed that part of the plan. It wasn't the Doctor, because he'd been as surprised as everyone else when the second Death Star showed up. Luke said he'd had a very clear and complete vision of these events, as if they'd already happened and he was someone who had not been involved learning about them as history. Anakin confirms that, as Yoda had said, the Force is not a reliable source of information on the future. They wonder if the Prophets of Bajor might have sent him a vision so he'd protect Sisko, but the visions they send do not at all match what Luke describes. They decide it's a mystery. ::Meanwhile on Arrakis, the ghost of Obi-Wan has an audience with Leto II, the God-Emperor of Dune, who explains that his prescience allowed him to see all that had happened and was going to happen as this saga unfolded. He felt a real kinship with Luke since their lives and their family histories are so similar (look at Dune Messiah/Children of Dune alongside Revenge of the Sith some time and you'll see what I mean). Also, he was very impressed by the Union of Worlds, which would not have been possible in the far grimmer human nature of the Duniverse; and he hated to see it all destroyed by Tarkin at the last second. Having spent thousands of years forcing people to live lives of oppression and misery for their own good, he wanted "their own good" to feel good for a change. So he used various Kwisatz Haderach tricks to punch a tiny hole in the "wall" between universes, and project a vision into Luke's mind at exactly the right moment. Then he summoned Obi-Wan, as a personification of the Force, so he could explain himself for the readers' benefit. Right before sending Obi-Wan back and sealing up the hole between universes--he can allow no further contact with other universes without jeopardizing the Golden Path--he assures Obi-Wan, and by extension the readers, that they all live happily ever after. ::In my free time--during long drives, while exercising, when my students are working independently and don't need my help, before I fall asleep, whenever I'm bored--I tinker with this, add details, play out how the narrative and dialogue will go. I've actually written almost none of it, however, because writing takes quite a bit more attention and energy than working it out in my head does, and when I do have the opportunity to write it, I invariably have something more pressing to do. It's entirely possible I never will get around to writing all this down despite how attached I am to it. If I need an excuse to procrastinate, it's that the Twelfth Doctor features quite prominently in the second half, so to write his scenes I need to wait until they at least announce the actor who will play him (or her? I happen to think Minnie Driver would be an amazing Doctor), if not to see him in a few episodes so I can get a sense for what makes him tick. I could write the rest of the story while I wait, but then I'd want to route it around for feedback or put it on a fanfiction website (though knowing how many assholes there are on the Internet, I may regret that). The web is full of incomplete fanfics whose authors didn't finish what they started, and a lot of people really get into some of those stories only to be let down in the end. So I wouldn't do anything like that until I had the entire story written, which may very well never happen. ::But I do enjoy inflicting my outline on anyone who gives me an opening. If you bothered reading the whole thing, thanks, and hope you enjoyed. ;-) Turtle Fan (talk) 07:20, April 14, 2013 (UTC)